“Sorry. I don’t think I got a chance to ask, which company do you work for?”
She smooths her dark hair to briefly reveal an electric-blue strip underneath. “Well, I’m an ‘assistant’s assistant’ at the moment.” She holds her fingers up in quotes, rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of her job title. “At a cybersecurity company. I applied for an intermediate coding job, but they offered me this instead. It’s boring but it pays the bills. I’d much prefer working somewhere like Wyst.” She points to my name tag with my fake name, fake job title, and real company typed in Impact font. “What’s that like?”
“Oh, it’s great.” I launch into pitch mode, giving her the rehearsed spiel with personalized elements to suit a cool coder. This is a verbal safe space. Unlike Spencer, talking to hundreds or even thousands of people at once isn’t my strong suit. But one-on-one conversations, connecting with other people on a human scale, is where I can thrive.
We talk back and forth for our remaining time; then I move to the next seat along. I relax into my chair, knowing I’m out of Malcolm’s eye line now with several people separating us.
After the final bell rings, we’re meant to stay and swap details with people we connected with, but I trust Spencer has this in hand. Under the cover of the mingling crowd, I flee toward the side entrance, glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one has noticed me leaving. I turn around, my chest seizing as a large bony body bashes into me.
“Hey, watch—” The man’s voice goes silent.
“Sorry,” I say at the same time, keeping my head down and pushing past to the exit. But as I go to move, a hand on my arm stops me. My whole body tenses as I cut a side glance up.
“Jess,” Malcolm says. Not asks.
With a single look from his piercing eyes, everything comes flooding back. Everything he did, everything he said, everything that happened to me. The fear, the shame, the disgust—they crawl under my skin, wrenching fingers around my lungs and gripping tight. I want to punch him, scratch his eyes out so he can never look at me again, but then he’d definitely know it’s me.
“No, sorry. You must be thinking of someone else,” I answer his nonquestion with a shaky voice, my mouth so dry the words pour out like sand.
I shift, pull my tingling arm from his lanced fingers, and push the bar to open the door into the cold air. Heat rises up my throat as I shut the door behind me and run until I reach the end of the street. I heard the door latch about ten seconds after me and pray he didn’t see which way I disappeared. Or maybe he was just coming to get a second look, to confirm his suspicion. Either way, Malcolm cannot definitively know that I, Jess Leigh Cole, am here. Him knowing my real identity could ruin everything. A wave of heat pushes into me as I turn a corner and vomit into the bushes.
Chapter 19
Business Account (WYST) BALANCE: £2,321.63
Personal Account BALANCE: -£1,857.10
Recent transactions:
Microsoft Office annual business fee: £460.80
The last evening in Paris is celebrated with a contestants’ mixer party on the exclusive rooftop of the hotel; the bar is jarringly modern compared to all the other surroundings. The hotel is three hundred years old, so why does the bar have multicolored strobes lighting up the walls? Maybe I’m being a snob. But maybe it’s catering to the tech crowd who crave modernity and forward thinking, who need the next best thing to feel like they are living life in the most efficient way possible, therefore maximizing their prowess over everyone else in the room.
When Spencer and I got back to our hotel after the speed networking, I asked him to look Malcolm up online. He’s working as a tech and business journalist for a small-fry online magazine based in London. Just seeing his author profile on the website made me feel like I was going to throw up lunch all over again. At least I can relax knowing journalists aren’tinvited to this part of the event, and we’re getting on the last train back to London tonight. Once the results of Round Two come out later tonight, we will no doubt be voted out of the competition and this will all be over. I’ll never have to see him again.
“How many people in this bar do you think have blood boys?” Spencer leans in to ask.
I scrunch my face. “Blood boys?”
“You know, where they infuse their blood with a younger, healthier person’s blood as a way to slow down their aging.”
I side-eye my brother. “Ew, where did you hear that?”
He shrugs. “Twitter. But the main reason they want to live longer is to conquer more businesses. It’s weird because the people that live the longest are Mediterranean great-grandmothers who have eaten tomatoes, focaccia bread, and wine their whole lives.”
My stomach growls at his words, having survived the afternoon hiding out in the hotel room on nothing but complimentary biscotti and espresso.
“So the things they want to live longer for are the things that are killing them faster?” I offer.
“Yeah, like you’d live longer if you just took that money and chilled the fuck out, ya know?”
My mind drifts to an image of me living in a beach hut; sand in crevasses at all times, sunburn, sea-salt crunchy hair. I shudder, a nightmare. But on second thought, a beach bar with no responsibilities does sound good right now.
As we step into the throng, Spencer converts to CEO mode, immediately abandoning me for his new friends. This is justlike when we started secondary school. We’d always been in the same friend group, but he’d insisted that we have our “own friends” now that we were in Big School. Of course, whenever I had friends over, he would charm them, declaring them as his own once he’d socially conquered them. He would have sleepovers and I was not invited.
He bounds over and is greeted by his new besties. All founders and CEOs. They are acting like they are friends now, but I don’t think he fully understands how each one of them would throw him into traffic for a shot at placing in the top three. To him, this is just a fun experience he can look back on fondly, but for them, TechRumble is a battle royal in Armani suiting.
Left to my own devices, I beeline toward the open bar. After ordering a Negroni, I lean against the cold edge and scan the crowd. A sea of gray, navy, and black with pops of tie color, but never too loud because that would be obnoxious. My eyes snag on Dominic, a commanding presence with so many eyes on him. Studying his face among the average businessmen truly makes me understand how Spencer was describing him. This man looks like a movie star. So unbelievably unattainable based on his face and stature alone. But combined with his wealth and unique brand of magnetic yet stoic charisma, I can see why every single person’s body language subtly gravitates toward him. I know the feeling of everyone knowing who you are when you walk in the room. But my version doesn’t stem from awe and adoration; it was from a sickly mix of judgment, anger, and pity. Maybe going through that experience makes you acutely aware of when people are staring at you. Which is how my skin buzzes when I catch sight of Oliver looking straight at me froma group of Odericco assistants. His demeanor shifts, tensing at the sight of me. He tilts his head, furrowing his brow into a question.
